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For the first time in twelve years, work has commenced on the unreleased sophomore album from CONTROL DENIED. Guitarist Shannon Hamm and Morrisound Recording guru Jim Morris (ICED EARTH, SAVATAGE, CRIMSON GLORY, DEATH) have been reviewing material recorded by the band before Chuck Schuldiner’s untimely passing.

Control Denied started in 1996 as Schuldiner wanted to procure a more melodic style than was possible with Death. The project was interrupted by Death’s release The Sound Of Perseverance in 1998, but finally the debut album was released in 1999. A second album, tentatively titled When Man And Machine Collide, was partly recorded, but the death of Schuldiner in 2001, put the recordings on hold.

by Luxi Lahtinen, EvilG and Robert Williams

It’s hard to believe it was 10 years ago, on December 13th 2001, that the entire Heavy Metal world was hit by sad news: Chuck Schuldiner (also known as “Evil Chuck”) of Death had tragically passed away. He lost a lengthy battle with a cancerous brain tumor, dying at the age of just 34. The Heavy Metal world was in shock and mourned his loss, realizing how much joy Chuck Schuldiner had brought Metal fans around the world through his music for nearly two decades.

Chuck is considered as one of the true pioneers of the Death Metal genre, starting out his musical career in 1983 by using the Mantas moniker, and changing the name to Death in late 1984. Death’s debut full-length studio album, SCREAM BLOODY GORE, originally released on Combat Records in 1987, was in many ways a groundbreaking Metal album. It turned out to be a remarkable and influential Metal record for many young generations to come. Unquestionably from that particular album in question onwards, Chuck’s career as a musician, started to sky rocket – Chuck deserved and enjoyed the attention and success he gained with his band Death. People knew Chuck as an ambitious musician who always wanted to develop himself as a musician, to reveal some new sides out for himself. He got involved with a more experimental-sounding super-group called Voodoocult in 1994 for one record – and formed Control Denied (1995-2001), in which he was able to write more melodic stuff that didn’t suit Death’s music (it’s been told the ex-members are determined to finish the 2nd Control Denied album, as that was one of Chuck’s last wishes for all the fans). Chuck’s legacy in Metal is probably greater than any of us will ever realize.

It’s now been 10 long years since the legend left this world. Therefore, we here in Metal-Rules.com decided to honor Chuck’s memory together with several people from all around the world who were either very close to Chuck and knew him personally (Chuck’s ex-band mates, close friends, etc.), or to whom Chuck’s music made a great impact, resulting in thousands and thousands of young musicians forming their own bands – heavily inspired and influenced by Chuck’s signature vocal style, guitar playing and so on. All the people who got involved with this special feature, told their heart-warming and humble thoughts about our much loved, never-forgotten, and very much respected fallen hero.

Oh, just before you are about to start reading this massive tribute article to Chuck, first make sure that your room is filled up with some of Chuck’s music at the highest volumes possible. If you neighbors don’t like it, tell them you have an official permission today to play your music as loud as you want to, authorized exclusively by Metal-Rules.com.

Written by Luxi Lahtinen on October 30th 2011

This tribute is dedicated especially to Chuck’s family, relatives, close friends and all those people who really cared for Chuck and all his music he ever did. Chuck’s legacy and music are meant to live forever.

CONTROL DENIED singer Tim Aymar has released the following statement regarding the completion of the band’s second album, When Machine And Man Collide:

“On December 13th, we will once again take at least a few moments of our day to remember the Father Of Death Metal, Chuck Schuldiner. Those who know Chuck’s music from DEATH and Control Denied have faithfully and patiently awaited the announcement of the completion of Chuck’s dying wish which is to get the final Control Denied record out to you, and along with my other band-mates, I am extremely happy to be here to fulfill the promise I made a decade ago.

When I first talked to Chuck about auditioning for a new band he was working on, an extension of his former band Death which he called Control Denied. We first talked over the telephone, and he was not at all like what I had expected him to be. My band-mate, co-writer and dear friend Jimmy Dofka from PSYCHO SCREAM had turned me on to Death a few months before, and the picture I had in my mind of Chuck, judging only by how precise and beautifully violent that music is, was of a brutal tyrant. I mean after-all, just listen to Gene Hoglan’s drumming and the command of Chuck’s blood soaked screaming, and you’ll know what I mean. Well, I was delightfully wrong. The voice on the phone was just a guy like me, an easy going, slow talking hippie with a burning passion for metal. We both understood the seriousness of the business at hand, but neither of made it seem anything but exiting and fun, and that was awesome. That’s just what professionals do.

We talked about our tastes in music and inspirations and our idols. We were definitely on the same page. He said he wanted me to audition because from what he’d heard already from Psycho Scream, my voice had all the qualities he had been looking for since he began his journey into metal. There’s a bit of everyone we both liked in there, a bit of Dio, Halford, Tyler, Gillan, Bonnet, all the best screamers in the biz. With that in mind, we set a date and I flew down to meet him and do the audition. I thought maybe there was a chance he was blowing a bit of smoke up my ass, because that’s just what some people do. But no, as it turns out, he was one of the few people in this biz that didn’t.

I arrived at Orlando International and just grabbed my stuff at the luggage return, when Chuck, Scott, Chris and Shannon came running and screaming through the hallway like pack of wild dogs yelling ‘Tim Scream, Tim Scream’, my new nickname which later, at the house I found inscribed on a half gallon bottle of Jim Beam. They mugged me of my luggage, lifted me up and threw me in the air like a rag doll. I knew this was gonna be a hell of a week already. Surprisingly, we jumped into the car and they had the Psycho Scream tape in the player, and they were singing along like they’d known it forever. We got to the house and there it was… the ominous bottle with the letters J and B scratched out and the rest of the letters sharpied in to spell out Tim Scream. We got to work right away…on the booze, and then we listened to a bunch of stuff from Chuck’s vinyl collection.

Once we got rolling in the studio, the work went smooth as buttermilk. We knocked out three songs in 2 1/2 days rather than the 5 we expected, so Chuck mixed down the tunes and when he was finished he called me into the kitchen. He poured us each a shot of Tim Scream, handed me one and said “we’re all very happy about this, and if you want the job, I won’t even call Halford back.” I could not believe what I had just heard. He not only wanted a voice like one of my all time greatest idols, he had planned on auditioning him after me. But that’s how he said it. That’s just what bosses do.

The police showed up at our first practice as a band. Chuck was polite, but firm in his conviction when he said ‘you might think you know who you came here to hassle, but you don’t know I’m probably the only person on this street who’s house is paid for and my taxes are paid as well, I’ve been all over the world with my band and that’s how I bought this place and not how these people who called you tell their children who say shit to my nephew at school and send him home crying. I just paid like 10 grand to sound proof my home so these people would not hear us, and now you’re telling me it’s too loud? what is the law? I’ll abide it.’ He wanted to know because that’s just what good neighbours do.

So at the end of the week it was time to say goodbye and I waited for the call from Chuck to find out the progress on his soliciting the demos. I waited, and worked my engineering job at Soundscape, and my management job at a home improvement company sales office. Several family members had passed away, including my mom and I was layed off from work, and Chuck did find a record deal with Nuclear Blast America, but it was for Death. I wasn’t sure why he didn’t contact me, but finally I got an email from Liz at NB and she told me Chuck lost my number and needed to talk with me about Control Denied. Then a friend brought over a copy of The Sound Of Perseverance and showed me the liner notes. Chuck had written to me through the liner notes that he lost my number. This is immortalized. Then when I went to pick up the phone to call him, it rang, I answered and it was him. It wasn’t the first time it happened; it happened before and several times after this. It happens with other friends too. That’s just what spiritual connections do.

I met up with the whole Death line-up when they finally hit Pittsburgh, and hung out with them for the rest of the night. This was my first time meeting Richard Christy, our drummer. Chris had already decided to move on, and that was ok because we all knew how much he loved Control Denied, but he just couldn’t hang around waiting and he joined up with another project. Richard, I had already heard with his previous band Burning Inside, because they are on the same compilation CD as Psycho Scream, so technically we were already on the same record together, although in separate bands. Well, Richard and I couldn’t have hit it off any better. We’re both practical jokers. Richard devised a plan to mess with the tour manager. He took a candy circus peanut, stuffed it into the neck of a Heineken bottle and popped the lid back on, and handed it to me. He said, put this in the cooler and when I tell you, grab it and give it to this guy. So the tour manager jumps on the bus and says ‘somebody get me a beer’ and I handed him the Heiney. He popped off the top and tried to take a swig. Upon further inspection, he noticed something odd and that was my cue. ‘oh my god, there’s a fucking mouse in it, holy shit, it’s a fucking mouse.’ He just about vomited when we let him in on the joke. I showed them down the street to THE “O” to get some greasy but good greasy pizza and we joked and talked some more and later, Richard said to me “you got a lot of balls fucking with the tour manager the first time we’ve met” I waited for the punch line…’so you’re gonna fit right in with this bunch.’ Yep, I already knew it.

So I went back home again, and a month or so later , I packed my bags for Orlando. This time, it was to demo some new tunes since a few of the one’s on the Control Denied tapes had been ‘Deathized’ and recorded on TSOP. We demoed and wrote and re-demoed and re-wrote and we rehearsed with the band and.. barbecued. AAAAAAh yeah, carnivores, all of us. We love carnage, and Chuck was our master chef. Being a former chef by trade, I was impressed. He loved coffee and bagels too, so it became our morning ritual. Gourmet coffee, bagels and cream cheese, Jerry Springer and Southern Rock. To get fired up before we hit the studio, we had our breakfast watching Jerry Springer to laugh at the stupidity, and we ordered up MOLLY HATCHET from the local radio station. When Hatchet came on, we’d crank it up and sing along at the top of our lungs like complete idiots. It was such a blast, so… not what you’d expect from such a prominent figure in the music business, yet that’s why it all worked. How could anyone in the world have an ego tantrum or a pissing contest after behaving in such a manner. Impossible.

Wait, I haven’t even mentioned catfish sandwiches or Bethanne yet. This story gets better. I met Chuck’s sister at the country club she worked at. I had mentioned that I loved catfish, so they highly recommended the catfish sandwich. OH MY God! Good catfish, but I mean Bethanne. It took maybe 5 minutes to realize how awesome a gal she is. Not only is she a sight for sore eyes, she’s sharp as a whip, funny as hell, a practical joker as well, and did I mention whip? Later on I saw another side of Bethanne I admire even more. DO NOT TRY TO HURT HER. I swear to that thing people swear to, if you try to hurt Bethanne, we’re all gonna step aside and let her loose on you. I mean I’d rather go toe to toe with Chuck Norris than piss her off. But seriously, when it comes down to it, she’s the best sister in the world. OK, back to the barbecuing.

So, it was Valentine’s Day. Chuck and I are two bachelors spending the day together because we’re two weeks into rehearsals and still wrapping up the demos. Chuck bought chickens and steaks and I bought prawns and lobster tails and we’re preparing a feast for ourselves and the rest of the cast of carnivores who were en route. Just as they rolled in for dinner and practice, Chuck brought me the phone. ‘It’s your dad,’ he said. I almost swallowed my tongue. ‘huh?’ my dad only calls me when bad things happen like when someone dies. ‘You have to come home,” my dad said, “little Danny died.’ My youngest brother was Chuck’s age, this could NOT be real. The guys heard what just happened and they huddled around me and kept me from falling apart; that’s just what brothers do. Chuck yelled ‘what bag do you want to take?’ oh fuck, this IS real. “Don’t worry, Bethanne and Mom are gonna book you a flight and I’ll get you to the airport right away.” It seemed like maybe three seconds but it must have been an hour or so, that she had the flight booked. That’s just what a sisters do. Chuck got me to the airport, and explained the story of his brother Frank, and why he named his band Death in order to turn such a horrible, negative feeling into something positive. “Take your time, as long as you need, and when you get back, I want you to put everything you’re feeling right now into this record, for yourself, for your brother and for mine, and from now on we have each other, we are brothers in pain, and it’s our obligation to the fans to give them what we honestly feel.” I did, because that’s just what singers do.

Mid-way through recording, Chuck started having a problem with severe headaches and neck pain. Well, he’d been a guitarist for half his life and a headbanger at that, and he’d just come home a month before from a long ass tour and had been spending more time than I would want to screaming at the record company about how they planned on launching this band. So, I recommended he see a chiropractor to adjust his neck and get the blood flowing and that should have taken care of the headaches too. Well, it would have, if the problem hadn’t been a malignant brain-stem tumor that took his life two years later. That’s just what cancers do. I know survivors, but I’m sure their survival were inevitable and were not recovery or a cure from any sort of treatment. These are people who had so much money that the doctors tried to kill them slower in order to get all their money, and the ‘treatments’ weren’t strong enough to kill them, so their cancers probably went away on their own. That is also just what cancers do. And don’t try to tell me otherwise, because I’m sure you don’t know how to fucking cure cancer.

So here comes the fun part. Before Chuck passed away, shortly after his first surgery he was well enough to write and track his parts, Richard’s drums, Shannon’s solo’s and a vocal template for me to go by for each of the songs. He called me shortly after he’d worked on getting the band off of Nuclear Blast because they did not execute several key factors of the contract such as advertising, and small things like FORGETTING TO PUT A FUCKING BARCODE ON THE FIRST 10,000 UNITS??? I doubt that it was a mistake. They were ripping Chuck off from the get go. There was a war of words between myself, the new label Hammerheart, who was not financially stable enough to back any promises they had made, and Chuck tried to get that bogus deal settled, and get off that suicide rig, but he died first. leaving his grieving family to contend with the legal battle for 9 gruelling years. The company was finally forced to admit the deal was fraudulent, but they took the Schuldiners through hell first. That’s just what record companies do. A lot of them anyway, but I think we’ve finally found a home that Chuck would be very proud of at Relapse.

Enter Eric Greif. He is formerly Chuck’s attorney, and considered a brother just like we brothers in the band, and like all brother’s sometimes it meant arguments and fighting, and sometimes it meant making up and being best friends again. That’s just what brother do, too. Well, Eric has been around the block, so to speak as far as representing musicians, and he has made great progress on behalf of Control Denied, Death and the Schuldiner legacy. He’s now the President of Perseverance Holdings LTD and Mutilation Music (BMI) which means basically that he is on-board in Chuck’s stead, to make sure his intellectual property is managed and his wishes are carried out. He’s really kicking some ass since he’s come on board. Both Death and Control Denied are now signed with Relapse, one of metal’s most respected record companies. There are reissues of several Death records and is working to get most of Death’s records reassigned to Relapse. The Control Denied CD The Fragile Art Of Existence’ is re-released as a three-CD set, and a two-CD set, both with loads of special tracks and pictures and notes from the band (see BraveWords.com review here). It just gets better and better every time I talk with him. That is just what good attorneys do!

Eric gave me a call yesterday to let me know the time has come. Did you hear that? No you probably can’t believe I just said it. THE TIME HAS COME!!! Our Producer, Jim Morris at Morrisound in Tampa, Florida who have brought to life notable albums by Death, Control Denied, TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA, SAVATAGE, ICED EARTH, SEVEN MARY THREE, CANNIBAL CORPSE, DEICIDE, MORBID ANGEL, DEMONS AND WIZARDS, END-TIME ILLUSION and OBITUARY, just to name a fraction of the killer artists on their roster, has contacted Eric Greif, informing the members of Control Denied that he is ready to begin laying out the planning and scheduling to complete Chuck Schuldiner’s legacy When Machine And Man Collide. You heard it right, and you heard it straight from the horses (hey wait a minute) mouth. This record will see the light of day and be in your hands sometime in 2011 and Jim will make certain it’s every bit as awesome as Chuck ever wanted and then some!!!”

CONTROL DENIED’s legendary first album ‘The Fragile Art of Existence’ will get the deluxe re-issue treatment through Relapse Records this fall. ‘The Fragile Art of Existence’, originally released in 1999 to critical acclaim, has been re-mastered, re-packaged and features liner notes from CONTROL DENIED drummer Richard Christy, never-before-seen photographs, as well as over an hour of previously unreleased demo and rehearsal tracks.

Two versions of ‘The Fragile Art of Existence’ re-issue will be available starting October 26th. The worldwide version is a two-CD set including the original album plus a bonus CD of early demo material. The second version will be limited to 1,000 copies and is a three-disc set including an extra bonus disc of demo tracks, many of which have CONTROL DENIED guitarist Chuck Schuldiner on vocals. The complete track listing of songs included in the three-disc set can be found below and photos of the packaging can be found here. This special re-issue package is available via Relapse.com exclusively with pre-orders being accepted now.

A few months ago, we received a memo from Nuclear Blast saying that, for everybody’s amazement, Chuck Schuldiner, the leader of the world’s most important death metal band, was about to begin a series of treatments against a brain tumor, discovered right after the end of the recordings of Control Denied’s CD – his other band apart from Death. During August, after wishing his best and his full recover, we were lucky to be one of the twenty magazines around the world to receive the Control Denied CD, entitled "The Fragile Art of Existence", enclosed with a proposal to interview Chuck himself. We surely couldn’t let this opportunity to talk to him slip through our fingers. After all, we wanted to know how things are and wish him the best of luck personally. Here’s what happened during this cheerful interview.

A few months ago, we received a memo from Nuclear Blast saying that, for everybody’s amazement, Chuck Schuldiner, the leader of the world’s most important death metal band, was about to begin a series of treatments against a brain tumor, discovered right after the end of the recordings of Control Denied’s CD – his other band apart from Death. During August, after wishing his best and his full recover, we were lucky to be one of the twenty magazines around the world to receive the Control Denied CD, entitled The Fragile Art of Existence, enclosed with a proposal to interview Chuck himself. We surely couldn’t let this opportunity to talk to him slip through our fingers. After all, we wanted to know how things are and wish him the best of luck personally. Here’s what happened during this cheerful interview.